The Villa(69)

She sighs at that, tipping her head back. “Every time he called, he was always going on about how stalled out you were on your writing, how frustrating it was watching you throw your career away, given how much he’d sacrificed for it. But even though he’d talk like he was pissed off about it, he always sounded … I don’t know. Gleeful, kind of? Like it was a schadenfreude thing. He always felt like you picked your career over him, so I think he wanted you to be miserable in it. And I wanted him to know that wasn’t actually true.”

Looking back at me, Chess ducks her head to look into my eyes. “I swear to god, Emmy, if I’d known he was doing this, I never would’ve said anything.”

So Matt didn’t just want my money, he wanted my joy, too. All of it squeezed out of me because he had written his own version of how our marriage was supposed to go, what his life was supposed to look like. He was supposed to be the successful, happily married father with the successful, dutiful wife. That was his story.

And there I’d gone, changing the plot on him.

Serves you right for marrying a writer, huh?

I reach out and squeeze Chess’s hand. “When Matt doesn’t get what he wants, he goes hard. I mean, if he’s still calling you, he must think that he still has a shot with you. You’re clearly letting him think he still has a shot with you.”

Chess thinks about that, her brow wrinkled. “Well, you’re right about him going hard. The one time I actually tried to blow him off, he said something about how interesting people might find it that the self-help queen slept with her BFF’s husband.”

“Not very Powered Path,” I observe, and she grunts in agreement.

“I guess it seemed safer to keep taking his calls, to play up this idea that maybe we could be together at some point, but I needed time. That’s what he thinks this trip is about, me finally telling you about the two of us. He thinks that once you know, I’ll feel less guilty about it all and we can—”she makes air quotes—“‘see where this thing goes.’”

I take that in, thinking about all of Matt’s texts and calls. Not just about the legal stuff, then. Probably trying to get a sense of whether Chess had told me yet.

“So, Matt is trying to take my money and make sure I’m as unhappy as possible for committing the crime of not being the perfect wife. And he says he’s in love with you, but will also go full scorched earth if you won’t be with him?”

“That seems to sum it up, yes.”

I sit back slightly, looking at her. Outside, the rain is still falling, thunder rattling the windows, and the lights flicker for a second, briefly leaving us in the candlelit gloom.

“So how is this going to work, exactly?” I ask Chess. “The two of us working on a book together, while he’s still trying to claim a piece of what I’ve already written and he’s determined to be Mr. Chess Chandler? What kind of happy ending exists there?”

She doesn’t answer me, drawing her legs up and resting her chin on her knees, thinking.

There’s another crack of thunder outside, and this time, when the lights go out, they stay out.

The candelabra on the mantel sends flickering shadows over Chess’s face, its familiar lines shifting and blurring, hollows under her cheekbones dark.

“Maybe the advance for this book will be enough to pay him off?” I suggest, and I’m only half joking. “I can settle with him over the Petal Bloom stuff with my share, and you can send him hush money with yours.”

“And then what, he buys a fucking boat with money we made?” Chess says, her head snapping up. Her hands are resting on her upraised knees, fingers laced together so tightly her knuckles are white. “No fucking way.”

“He gets seasick, so it would probably just be a really stupid car,” I reply, and then I tilt my head back, looking up at the ceiling. Our shadows are up there, dark shapes sitting side by side, larger than life.

“I can’t believe that asshole is actually going to win in the end,” Chess murmurs, and her shadow lifts one hand, the movement elongated and slightly grotesque.

She’s right. It doesn’t seem fair that Matt should be able to take so much from both of us.

That Matt is the person to almost come between us for good.

That he will always be wedged in between us, our friendship—and now, even this book that we’ll make together.

That we might never cut ourselves free.

The thought starts out so small.

It’s just those words, really.

A seed that sprouts in dark, dark soil, a vine twisting into an idea, an idea that should horrify me, but doesn’t.

“I need to show you something,” I tell Chess.

Taking the candleholder near the door, I go up to my bedroom in the darkness, a pool of golden light just barely illuminating each step before me.

I fish under my mattress for Mari’s pages, and when I bring them downstairs, I hand them to Chess without a word.

It only takes her a second to realize what I’ve given her, and her whole face glows as she reads.

We sit there in the drawing room, Chess reading, me watching her, until she gets to the end.

(Well, almost the end. There’s actually still one more section that Mari wrote, but I’ve kept that for myself. I have to keep some part of this just for me.)

When Chess reaches the final page—Mari calmly writing the end of Lilith Rising as Noel screams downstairs—she looks up at me.